Nintendo 3DS Idea Man Pulls Back Curtain on Handheld’s Capabilities

As the platform producer of the Nintendo 3DS, Hideki Konno is in charge of ensuring that the new machine is supported by a wide variety of games.Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

LOS ANGELES — If you want to know why the Nintendo 3DS does what it does, look no further than Hideki Konno, the veteran game producer charged with defining the new machine’s capabilities.

Konno, who produced two of Nintendo’s biggest DS hits, Nintendogs and Mario Kart, spearheaded the concept of giving the upcoming handheld device a stereoscopic, glasses-free 3-D display.

He also designed Tag Mode, a hardware feature that will let players automatically trade game data with each other when their 3DS units get into range, even if they’re not currently playing the same game.

A longtime employee of Nintendo who cut his teeth on 1988’s Super Mario Bros. 2, Konno is platform producer of the 3DS, the promising device that made a big splash at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last month. A massive raised section of Nintendo’s E3 booth held dozens of 3DS units with many game demos, including a new Mario Kart and the surefire hit Nintendogs + Cats.

In a meeting room off the E3 show floor, Konno answered (or dodged) Wired.com’s questions about the new machine’s capabilities, the possibility of a 3DS with bigger screens, and Nintendo’s cautious approach to embracing 3-D.

Wired.com: How does the 3DS screen work?

Hideki Konno: The basic technology is quite old. For example, like a lenticular sticker where you shift it left and right and it shows different pictures. If we simply prepare a picture for the left eye, and a picture for the right eye, and the eyes each see a separate picture, it looks 3-D. The theory is the same, although it’s not a lenticular screen.

Wired.com: If it’s been around for a while, why has nobody used it in a videogame system before?

Konno: We have been doing these experiments for a very long time, starting from the NES era. We also tried with the Virtual Boy. And even for GameCube, with the development of Luigi’s Mansion, we were thinking of developing a 3-D version of it. However, at that time it was very difficult to realize it as an actual product on the market, because of the resolution of the screen and the separate costs of the console and screen.

Wired.com: So it was a matter of waiting for the costs to come down?

Konno: We have been waiting, going to tech shows and seeing the latest 3-D technology and devices that support those features. We started to have more confidence that this might be a good time to bring 3-D back to Nintendo.

Wired.com: There’s now an analog slide pad on the device. Is this additional control feature related to the 3-D graphics?

Konno: There is no direct relationship; it’s not that we created the slide pad because the system supports 3-D. But I have been developing console games for a very long time, and I think analog control is necessary. I want to have Mario Kart with analog control. Not only myself, but also Mr. Miyamoto was insisting that our next handheld have analog control.

Wired.com: You mentioned Tag Mode, which will let users exchange game data regardless of what game they’re currently playing. So if I want to trade Nintendogs with someone, it’ll be saved on the hardware, not the cartridge?

Konno: In the hardware, we have the capability that when you first play a game that supports Tag Mode, it will save to a Tag Mode data slot in the hardware system. We are planning to support multiple games at the same time: Mario Kart, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, etc.

Wired.com: And so there must be a menu in the hardware where you can manage the data, delete the data for games you aren’t using anymore …

Konno: Yes, we’ll prepare a Tag Mode Viewer, where if you look at the viewer you’ll be able to see that, for example you were able to connect with 50 people in Nintendogs and got their data, or got 100 people in Animal Crossing.

Wired.com: It seems like this would extend the life cycles of games; after you are done playing a game you might get some data and then decide to put the game back in.

Konno: Yes. We would like to create Tag Mode so that it will bring consumers a sense of wanting to play a game again, after they get new data from games that they’d forgotten about.

Wired.com: When I start thinking about data storage, I start thinking about downloadable games. 3DS will have some sort of downloadable game library, a 3DSWare, right?

Konno: I can’t talk about specifics today, unfortunately, but like WiiWare and DSiWare there should be downloadable content for this platform.

Wired.com: Do you see a shift in how people buy software with Nintendo 3DS? Do you see more people downloading versus buying games at retail?

Konno: This is my own personal opinion, but although I sometimes download music, when it’s game software I prefer to actually go to a store and get the product in my hands. However, I don’t think we can stop the era of downloadable purchases from coming.

Wired.com: There’s an accelerometer and gyroscope in the 3DS. Does that mean it pretty much does what the Wii MotionPlus does?

Konno: Yes, the same type of motion sensing is possible.

Wired.com: Is that going to be an issue, if people are developing games that use motion but that motion moves the 3-D screen out of a player’s field of view?

Konno: First of all, 3-D is not the only feature that we are pushing toward with this hardware. We think that there will be software that will emphasize motion control using the gyro. During our experiments, we have found that in a first-person shooter, we can use the sensor to move the aiming and the pointer. In that case, your line of sight is still quite rigid, your eyes are pointing at the screen, and so the 3-D effect won’t be diluted. So there is the possibility that both 3-D and motion control could be used in the same software.

Wired.com: Why is there an extendable stylus?

Konno: We couldn’t make it longer because the stylus slot is vertical, so we needed to have it collapse so we could make it longer.

Wired.com: I have a DSi XL and I’m used to those big screens. Is there a possibility that 3DS’ screens could get bigger?

Konno: Do you want that?

Wired.com: Yes.

Konno: The DSi XL was quite impactful with its very large screen, but the concept for the 3DS is to have consumers bring it out of their homes and carry it around, considering all of those Tag Mode functions in the hardware. If we make it too large, consumers might not be able to carry such a heavy thing in their bags. We wanted to make it compact.

Wired.com: Is it possible to make the 3-D screen bigger, or would that hurt the 3-D effect?

Konno: We can make it larger.

Wired.com: Could you make a television-size display?

Konno: We could do it, but besides the cost issue, consumers would have to be in one very specific position to watch the TV or the 3-D will be completely gone. With the handheld, there is only one position.

Wired.com: It’s a very powerful piece of hardware. Have you spoken about who’s manufacturing the graphics chip?

Konno: We can’t announce specific partners at E3, but in the near future that specific information will be updated.

Wired.com: In 2004, when the first DS was first shown at E3, we saw an exterior form factor that wasn’t final. Will the look of the 3DS be changed before its release?